Bella is so cooperative.

As soon as Tony is done with Bella's, she starts working on one for herself. She usually doesn't wear her own armour, but come on, who doesn't want to fly?

Her fiancée is continually delighted by everything she does!

And that's adorable and Sherlock's adorable and Bella is quite falling in love with her, which is convenient, since they are engaged.

Yes, it's lovely how that works out, isn't it.

"That is good to know," says Sherlock.

"I thought it would be. That is why I told you." Snuggle snuggle.

Kisses! Excellent.

This is an excellent time for kisses.

"Hey," says Bella, wandering into the kitchen where Sherlock is fixing dinner, "I haven't seen Tony all day, where is she?"

"Walking, ostensibly. I would expect her to be back by now, however."

"Yeah, she's usually back well before dinner." Bella chews her lip. "...The room with all the enchanted windows is in that door I brought, I could go try to check on her."

"Do that, then."

"An explosion rather than search failure narrows it down, but not in a good way," mutters Bella, starting to pace.

"In what way, then?"

"If the spell just failed that could mean I made the window wrong or addressed the window wrong or that Tony had secretly been made of soap bubbles all along, or something. If it explodes, that means there's copious amounts of hostile magic between my window and her."

"Off," Bella mutters to the stove, and she follows. "We should find her but we should prepare - your armor, my armor - we should tell your mother -"

"First I am going to find out where she is," says Sherlock, and she keeps walking.

"There is a large amount of hostile magic in the way is where she is! If you walk into it right now it could - Sherlock, it could kill you, I don't know what it is but that's definitely on the list of things it could be -" Bella's hurrying after her as fast as her moccasins allow.

"I did not say I would go to where she is," says Sherlock. "I said I would find it."

"What makes you think you can do that without running into the great big wall of hostile magic? I know you're insanely good at finding things but nothing says the magic in question is closer to where she disappeared from than to here."

"I am not doing what you assume I am doing," says Sherlock, closing her eyes and running her fingers along invisible filaments in the air, "and I do not have time to explain what I am doing until after I have done it. It would be extremely helpful if you would fetch our armour in case we have need of it when I am done."

Her Majesty is not in evidence.

Fine. Bella fetches all the requested armor, puts hers on and pours her loafing-around-the-house sleeves into her armor-sleeves, and dons her hat before sweeping out into the clearing after Sherlock again.

Bella stops a few steps away and puts her specs on for lack of anything helpful to offer.

She is surrounded by threads of royal magic, and there is some kind of communication going on between her and them. Nothing beyond that is clear.

Bella flicks between lenses but gets no further detail. She puts her specs away. She waits.

Bella swallows.

"We should tell your mother, or at least leave a note, I didn't see her anywhere when I was fetching the armor. But yes, I'm coming."

"I've told the forest," says Sherlock. "She'll know."

"...Okay. Should I get the flying carpet?"

"Yes, please," says Sherlock. "We will need it when we leave the forest."

Bella runs back into the castle - the armor, unlike her moccasins, can handle running - and comes out with the carpet. It won't fit in her sleeve; she props it on her shoulder.

Sherlock can't use the monarch's transport spell, but she can walk into the forest and have it spit her out of the desired edge a few minutes later.

Bella follows closely, preoccupied, thinking about what could have made her window explode.

"What sorts of things make magic windows explode?" she asks as they emerge from between the trees.

"Looking at locations that are unfriendly to divination. Some places have that naturally - there are spells that will do it, almost certainly including wizard spells. It's also possible that I was caught looking and the explosion was someone deliberately reacting to it." Bella rubs at her cheek; bits of dried blood flake off.

"No one likes to waste," Sherlock remarks. "If they had a location with that property available, they may well have put her there to avoid the expenditure of having to bespell it themselves."

"Quite possibly. I don't know this area, though, and even though I could heal myself I'm not fond of the idea of having my specs explode while I wear them to look for it..."

"That should not be necessary," says Sherlock. "We can follow them until we find either a wizard or the residue of a transport spell. The former will yield answers to me, the latter to you."

"I've - I think I told you I'm good with glass - I don't have a lot of non-spec-based divining options. If you can point me at the exact location of some transport spell residue I can put it through my marble and have a look at it that way, but I don't have a good method for finding it in the first place unless we want to spend hours sitting here while I think of something."

"I will easily be able to pinpoint the exact location of the transport spell residue, if we come upon it."

"Okay then."

"In the meantime: this way."

Bella follows solemnly.

Sherlock seems very sure of where she is going, despite a lack of obvious signs.

Bella starts murmuring to her marble. Something about whatever she's doing makes her look tired.

"Hmm?" says Sherlock.

"If we're going to encounter wizards it's safer to have more of my magical energy in the marble where they can't take it than sitting in my witchwell and so on."

"Reasonable."

"Yeah, I just don't usually feed it much magic all at once. I won't overdo it, I'd be no use then."

Sherlock nods, inspects a stone on the ground, and keeps walking.

Bella eventually gets to the point where feeding her marble any more would be unwise, and stops.

Sherlock continues to follow a trail no one else can see. She's going slower now, though.

"Do you know anything else yet? Besides where to go?"

"Very little. Nothing I could easily put into words."

Bella nods, and continues following. "I could scout from the air but I doubt I'd be able to report the kinds of things you're looking at."

"...That doesn't sound at all good."

"I agree. But we are going to find it anyway."

"Carpet."

Bella unrolls it and sits. "You want to drive or should I?"

"It might be most efficient if you drove and I navigated."

Sherlock points.

Bella steers.

It is not such an incredibly long flight, and the cave is quite visible from the air.

"That sure looks like a cave," says Bella, descending cautiously.

"It is one," says Sherlock. "Apart from that, its contents and nature are not extremely consistent."

"Would we be better off invisible?"

"We may very well be."

"Okay." Bella pauses the carpet, and carefully casts a spell of invisibility on the both of them. And then she descends the carpet the rest of the way, and rolls it up, and puts it behind a rock.

"Let's find Tony," says Sherlock, and starts into the cave.

Bella swallows and goes in after her, each hand on the opposite wrist ready to pull something out of a sleeve.

It's called the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises for a reason. Sherlock goes in expecting to be unpleasantly surprised. She keeps a little ahead of Bella, but not too far, in case something unpleasant comes at them from a surprising direction.

"I am not presently able to join you," says Sherlock.

"Sherlock, where'd you go?" Bella asks, overlapping enough of Sherlock's sentence to make it clear that the floor is soundproof in one direction.

That is annoying. Sherlock is annoyed.

Twisty passage it is.

Time to go back, then.

The twisty passage's back end apparently now divides into three equally twisty passages (left, right, and forward-and-down) in that direction.

She picks right.

Sherlock quickly becomes very good at not touching the glowing moss. She also keeps following the sound of Bella's voice.

Well, if there was something moving in the water, it's not making the water ripple anymore, although it's possible that from her vantage point there are parts of the pool she can't see, cut under the tunnel she's standing in.

Curiously, she douses the light.

Sherlock attempts to set it on fire.

When it is very thoroughly charred, it at last stops trying to eat her, and falls into the water, diminished but no longer insubstantial and therefore splashy.

Bella drops her frog, pulls a handful of something powdery and green out of her sleeve, and throws it at the bat things. She hits four of the flock, and those retreat into miscellaneous exits, shrieking, but the others get at her and start nibbling at bits of Bella that aren't covered by armor. Bella does her best to swat them away - none of them is bigger than size of her outstretched hand - but there's about forty. She eventually gives up on doing anything about their insistence on nibbling on her and attempts to help Sherlock out of the water, upon which exit the bat things begin to nibble Sherlock too.

Sherlock immediately heads for the nearest frog-free area, although she has some difficulty walking without help.

Bella insinuates herself under Sherlock's arm to serve as a crutch; she's nibbled but not in a way that impedes her movement much. "Ml-" she starts, but nope, apparently even spell words produce frogs; this one is small and pinkish-white.

On they limp, then.

Unless Sherlock has a better idea Bella will aim for the tunnel with the lowest ceiling, as it seems like it might be unappealing to bat-things.

Fine by her.

When they pass the last visible frog, Sherlock says testingly, "Frogs?"

Frogs! She gets four of them, apparently talking about frogs yields bonus frogs. They're all very little, though, cute little yellow and brown frogs.

She snorts.

Bella laughs helplessly. Apparently laughter is sufficient to produce a poliwog, which she spits out unhappily.

"First short word I thought of that wasn't an amphibian."

"I love you," laughs Bella weakly. "Let's - will it interfere with you being ready to fight more nasty monsters if we hold hands, I think that would make it harder for the cave to split us up again."

"It will not interfere," says Sherlock, "but I may need to drop your hand quickly if we come upon something sufficiently unpleasant."

"Okay." Bella takes Sherlock's hand. And as an afterthought produces a water bottle from a sleeve to rinse out her mouth; she offers it to Sherlock after she has spat frog taste onto the tunnel floor.

She grins and does likewise. "Thank you. Much appreciated."

"This cave," says Bella flatly, "is full of unpleasant surprises."

"I agree."

When the wizards have ceased to be surprised, Sherlock lets the flames die down and sheathes her sword. She turns immediately to Tony and Bella.

Bella has gotten Tony's hands untied so Tony can work on her own feet and now she's picking at the knot in the gag.

He's still suspended from the ceiling; he is not Bella's top priority and she left him for figuring out after getting Tony untied.

Sherlock decides that she agrees with these priorities. She goes to help Bella free Tony.

Presently Tony is untied and ungagged, if still blue. Bella kisses her forehead, then goes to let the guy with the donkey ears down.

Sherlock stays by Tony.

Tony leans silently on Sherlock.

Tony giggles.

Tony continues to giggle! She also hugs Bella.

"That is interesting to know," says Sherlock.

Sherlock finds the carpet.

"The tail is cute," says Tony. "Actually, the ears aren't bad either."

"This seems like a reasonable plan," says Sherlock.

"I'm good at those except when I wind up planning things like 'approach the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises right when six wizards are arguing about who has to be bait'," says Kanim.

Tony snorts.

"Perhaps Tony will show you the Skyvault," says Sherlock.

"It's not like the Skyvault and the forest magic are that separate," says Tony. "I mean, in one sense it's just a big magical windmill making everything else go round, but it does other stuff too."

"Yes, but it's not a natural component of the forest magic, is it? I'll pay attention to how they interact, but it's not the part that I'm likely to write a thesis on."

"Neither are the squirrels," Tony points out.

"I think you could say the Skyvault is kind of an expert too," says Tony.

"Is it? Does it talk?" asks Kanim.

"No, it just - is," says Tony. "I dunno, maybe you have to be me to get anything useful out of it."

"And, you know, my dad built the thing and I'm the one who maintains it," says Tony.

Tony snorts.

"It would be kind of horrible if they did!" says Tony.

"How long are the specs gonna take?" wonders Tony. "Can I help?"

"Well, each lens gets made separately, you can totally help me with the dwarf lens again, and if you want to make me some lensframes I bet you're way faster at that than I am. I think re-making everything but the dwarf lens will be faster without."

"You betcha I want to make you some frames!"

"That is because you are wonderful and useful," says Bella brightly. "I think I can figure out enough to un-blue and un-fire-suppression-you without those, though, so that'll be the first priority when we're safely home."

"That makes me so happy. Blue is not my colour," laughs Tony.

"Nope," says Tony. "I am done with the blue."

"I will unblue you," promises Bella.

"I love you," says Tony.

"I'm not gay," Tony says brightly.

"Aren't you now," says Kanim, looking with something between speculation and wrongfooted confusion at the bluer of the two princesses.

"Nope!"

"What exactly are we trying to explain, here? How it's possible that I'm not gay but I'm still going to marry my sister's eventual wife? Because man, I'm not tackling that one."

"Oh," says Tony. "There's sharing! No one will complain if we make out a little!"

"None here," says Sherlock. "Although perhaps you'd like to wait until we reach the castle."

"Why's that? Someone liable to get shoved off the carpet otherwise?" asks Kanim.

"The fact that I don't object to you kissing my sister doesn't mean I want to watch."

Tony also giggles.

"Mother knows we're home," Sherlock observes after a few more seconds.

"Should we land and have you do that tree-shifting thing?" asks Bella.

"That would be efficient."

Tony giggles.

"I observe that you are hugging the forest," says Sherlock, amused. "It is adorable."

Sherlock leads them deeper into the forest.

"Thank yoooou," says Tony, and she kisses Bella's cheek. Then Kanim's for good measure.

Sherlock is cooking with singleminded focus.

Bella watches her with a soft smile.